Patent Prowess

The number for 2007 U.S. patents is a proxy for relative patent prowess worldwide. The Pipeline Power score is derived by multiplying the company's patent count by the product of four other variables. Pipeline Growth (not shown here) represents the firm's 2007 patent activity, relative to its average performance in the five previous years. For the other three variables, a score above 1.00 indicates that the company performed better than average in its technology class; below 1.00 indicates worse than average performance. Pipeline Impact indicates how frequently all 2007 patents cited a company's patents from the previous five years. Pipeline Generality is a measure of the variety of technologies drawing on a company's patents. Pipeline Originality measures the variety of the technologies upon which an organization's patents build. Adjusted Pipeline Impact eliminates self-citation. The final score, Adjusted Pipeline Power, is an estimate of a company's overall patent power.